


Hunger Pangs

by AuroraNova



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 06:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8317489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraNova/pseuds/AuroraNova
Summary: Starfleet personnel mistake minor inconveniences for real suffering. Kira knows the difference all too well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I think the early episodes of DS9 glossed over the difficulties Kira would face, so this is my attempt to explore some of them. I own nothing and make no money here.

When the deflector grid is finally fixed for the third time this month Chief O’Brien gathers his tools and informs the Ops crew, “I’ll be back after a hearty lunch. I’m starving.”

Kira has to physically bite her lip to keep from speaking. These Federation types don’t understand. The chief may well be hungry, but Kira is certain he’s never been starving in his life. She’s seen starvation and it isn’t having lunch two hours late. It’s draining weakness, aching hunger, gnawing on anything you can find in the hope that some tree bark will be better than nothing.

For the first few days she had replicator access Kira ate every huge meal she’d ever dreamed about since childhood. Then she’d come to her senses and began following recommended dietary guidelines that were healthy without excess. Why should she eat maku tortes every day when people were still hungry on Bajor? Her spare replicator credits are adding up now. Soon she’ll have enough to fill a crate with food to send to orphans who really need it.

Dr. Bashir hadn’t even finished her first physical before he put her on a supplement regime to address years of chronic malnutrition. She has to show up in the infirmary every week for this, along with half the Bajorans on the station (including everyone who’d been in the Resistance except the Pa’Vaara cell, which demonstrates why nobody else in the Resistance ever trusted the Pa’Vaara cell). She knows real starvation.

It’s not O’Brien’s fault, really. Actually she doesn’t mind O’Brien, who has experienced war and doesn’t care for Cardassians. She prefers the self-proclaimed ‘proud Irishman’ (whatever that means; Kira keeps forgetting to look it up in the Federation database) to Bashir with his boundless optimism, patronizing his way through a great adventure in frontier medicine. Sisko is unpredictable; he can be steady as a Vulcan until he punches a nearly omnipotent alien, not to mention Kira isn’t entirely convinced he’s the Emissary and the whole thing is a messy tangle of faith and politics that makes her head ache if she thinks about it too long. Then there’s Dax, who Kira doesn’t dislike but finds unnerving with her lifetimes of experience, because she sometimes gets the feeling Dax sees her as an unruly teenager.

No, O’Brien is fine. He’s also a miracle worker which is very useful around here. The problem is how sheltered these Starfleet people are, how little they’ve experienced real suffering. It’s true that Sisko is a widower so he has experienced a bit of suffering, but he didn’t lose his wife to the enemy and then watch his child starve to death. Kira personally knew three Bajorans who went through that ordeal and there were certainly hundreds, maybe thousands more.

These are people who expect to have food when they’re hungry, drink when they’re thirsty, a quick increase in temperature when they’re cold. They haven’t done without so they consider the tiniest delay in meeting their needs to be a grave deprivation.

And the importance they place on hobbies! Kira doesn’t think she’ll ever understand. Dax, trying to make conversation, asked what Kira did in her spare time. It had apparently not occurred to her that spare time wasn’t a luxury anyone had in the Resistance. The closest thing Kira had to a hobby was collecting lichen from tree trunks because she was good at identifying the edible varieties and never once grabbed the kind that made everyone vomit. It turns out that nothing a person does to survive counts as a hobby.

Bashir, once again managing to misread the situation even with probably respectable intentions, had announced that he wanted to learn more about Bajoran culture. After Kira suggested a few of the most basic texts on the Prophets the doctor asked about theater and literature, as though Kira had time for scholarship while killing Cardassians. She coolly informed him that he wouldn’t understand Bajoran culture until he spent quite a while studying the Prophets; she didn’t tell him that she could name famous works of literature but couldn’t discuss them because most of them she’d never read.

She looks forward to the day, in some hazy but possible future, where Bajorans don’t understand literal starvation, where they have time for books and hobbies, when they sit and savor their meals like Sisko does, as a social event instead of scarfing down any available food before it’s gone.

For the time being when Starfleet crew make these thoughtless remarks she reminds herself that it’s a good thing not to have experienced such horrors and they aren’t doing anything wrong by taking basic necessities for granted. It still takes an effort every time not to call them out for their privilege. Kira thinks this is probably a good thing, because she never wants to forget. Bajor needs to remember the Occupation to make sure it’s never repeated.

She thinks of O’Brien heading to his meal to assuage the minor hunger he mistakenly takes for starvation, and of the millions on Bajor who consider themselves blessed to have far less than O’Brien. Then, when she’s thirsty, she orders water instead of juice.

That’s one more replicator credit for her orphanage fund.


End file.
